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Experimenting with pixel animation, for the purposes of a retro game with a dragon, probably some day realized for the Uzebox.

The animation was made using Gimp, an interesting feature being the non-square pixel aspect ratio (3:2), which fits a new mode I am designing for the Uzebox.

The Uzebox is a retro-minimalist game console based on an 8 bit AVR running at 28MHz, having merely 64K of ROM space and 4K of RAM. The latter is the particularly steep limitation coupled with the lack of any graphics assistance (it is simply a resistor ladder on a 8 bit output port).

No references used, just from memory. The background is a simple placeholder, just experimenting with the animation aspect, and how I could potentially arrange it in the tight space provided by the aforementioned hardware.

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I wandered around somewhat aimlessly on Youtube recently, and happened to stumble upon something exceptional, something which I wouldn't expect to exists. I like much fantasy creatures, especially dragons, and here I happened to find three very good pieces of animated short movies featuring them! Not even just at CGI, these even offer quite original ideas, so all in all, they definitely worth some attention - and not even just such a limited-time attention like typical shorts.

In this article I am going to cover how it is possible and probably the most efficient to work with images using non-square pixels in Gimp. Why this has some importance? It is mainly useful for doing artwork for retro computing such as the quasi-standard 320x200 256 color VGA mode, the Commodore 64 and several other machines and display modes of the 80s which frequently had non-square pixels.

An image from (or for) the planned game Cheetaan Legacy, portraying one of the races (Shiriat / Cyat) at one of their typical environments. The image itself is not bad, but a little sloppy. For one it is that for a comment from a friend I started to study a little more how railway equipment looks from different angles, and I got the bogies wrong, just too flat. The other part is that probably I could do much better now at the portraits. So this is rather just an experiment which in this form will never make into the game (If ever).

The wyverns stirred my imagination further resulting in another writing, this time using a conventional medieval setting. Nothing exceptional, just practicing forming stories and some English language grammar, but I hope nothing short of pleasant entertainment either. Except lots of interesting interactions with wyverns in this one!

This old panther-alike was intended to be the main character portrait of the game idea which later grew to be Cheetaan Legacy (Which is still in a galaxy far-far away...). Medicore color selection with rather medicore art quality, later I got to improve in both aspects.

A pixel work which turned out quite good considering it's age. As I remember I did this on my old 25MHz 4.86, but sure that in Deluxe Paint II (DOS). The anatomy of the cheetah is not entirely right, but in overall the image works.

Flight of a Dragon is a retro style game for the Uzebox open source game console, a bit of 8 bit madness involving an ATMega 644 and a bit of electronics to get it producing a video signal and accepting input from an SNES controller. Now the game is complete so you can finally lead the dragon to his salvation! Thanks to emulation, you may also try it out within your browser!

Yet another wyvern design aiming for realistic capability of flight and a dragonlike appearance, a controversial beauty. She has no direct relation to the gold wyverns of Outbreak to the Sky, although those were one inspiration source to design her.

Pencil sketch on some A/5 leaf. Well, this is really on "some" A/5 leaf, although this is not as bad as some other such old pieces of mine. This was just on some thin paper with a triangle grid on it's back which would show through no matter what arcane thing you do with your scanner.

A BRCF volunteer's log is my first attempt at English writing, nothing exceptional, but maybe interesting. It portrays a modern age setting in which a group of people strive to protect a race of large wyverns in Africa, not unlike of similar conversation efforts of other animals like cheetahs. Story intermixed with world design, trying to make it lifelike we have these creatures capable to lift a man in the air.

What happens when something gets me really inspired in the process... (Click the image to get it in 1920x1200) You could also check out the related article for the backgrounds and some research over airworthiness. Enjoy!

Spinosaurus Aegyptiacus reconstruction (at least an attempt at it), as of 2015 knowledge: the Ibrahim et al. papers from 2014 and the later adjustments on the hindlimb size, discarding the quadrupedal stance. Fleshed out according to some own ideas as well as various existing knowledge on the animal.

Continuing the design of a four limbed dragon. Here I used first-angle projection to shape the head, then added the whole body to the front view. This dragon is roughly similar by anatomy to the Tani Akri (the dragon from the Cheetaan Universe). There are some oddities of the design, making this creature "functional".

Yet another rather eccentric dragonlike, the wyvern taur. As usual, I tried to build him up so it is reasonably plausible that he could stay up in the air without making physics and anatomy curling up in a corner weeping.

Two distinct Interlace HI-Res + Sprite images for the Commodore 64. I created these using a small self-made pixel pusher software, also implementing a rudimentary display routine for them for the real C64 (Nothing of much interest, I only used a single 16Kb page for the VIC, half the screen left flickering like hell, but that proved it!).

Flight of a Dragon is a retro game for the Uzebox open source game console, a bit of 8 bit madness involving an ATMega 644 and a bit of electronics to get it producing a video signal and accepting input from an SNES controller. Thanks to emulation, you may also try it out within your browser!